NHL: Bruins auditioning capable blueliners down stretch

Remember those years when the Bruins would devote the regular-season stretch run to wins and points and concentrating on home ice for the playoffs?

That has consumed them even though they won the 2011 Stanley Cup on the road in Vancouver, seem to be a more disciplined and effective team away from home, and as of Friday had the best away record (18-10-3, a .629 winning percentage) in the Eastern Conference.

This year's agenda, thankfully, appears to be different. By his own admission, coach Claude Julien plans to use these final 16 games to audition his eight defensemen — nine, if you include the injured Adam McQuaid — and whittle the group down to a reliable core of six for the playoffs.

With Dennis Seidenberg out for the year with a blown-out knee, and McQuaid a question mark with a persistent hip injury that will keep him sidelined at least another week or two, the Bruins need to come up with two new top-four defensemen to complement Zdeno Chara and Johnny Boychuk, their two premier blue-liners.

The tryouts have started already. Dougie Hamilton was a healthy scratch for the Florida and Montreal games, and Torey Krug — who is second among Bruins' defensemen with 13 goals — was ordered to sit out Thursday's 2-1 win over Phoenix, his first missed game of the season. Newcomer Andrej Meszaros was the healthy scratch on Saturday.

"You've got to know that you've got depth, and we've got to find out how good our depth is and how good our top six are going to be," Julien said on Thursday, "because those are things that we get to do here. And that, to me, is more important than trying to finish first, because if you just focus on playing your game, finishing where you're going to finish is going to take care of itself.

"So to be really pushing on that and not doing the rest of your work, to me, is not filling all the gaps that you need to fill before playoffs."

And we've seen how little the regular season means when the playoffs roll around. It's a different game, calling for a different approach, usually with different results than you'd expect.

One last word about the co-called home-ice "advantage:" Besides having the best road record in the East, the Bruins have points in their last 11 road games (8-0-3), and their last regulation road loss was a 4-2 defeat in Los Angeles way back on Jan. 9.

Hamilton, a first-round draft pick, wasn't flustered over being benched twice, even though his previous game had been a tough one — a minus-2 rating in Tampa.

"I think that's because he trusts us," Julien said of the 20-year-old Hamilton. "We've told him as a coaching staff the whole time he's a good player and he's going to be an even better player as we move on here. What we've asked him is to be patient with us because he came in here as a 19-year-old.

"A 19-year-old that's on a team that's rebuilding is going to play a ton; a 19-year-old that's on an established team doesn't get the same luxury, but he gets the luxury of developing in a winning environment and finding out quickly what it takes to win, so he's in a good situation. I think we know what we've got, he knows that we know that as well, and it's just a matter of being patient."

"The coaches talked to me," Hamilton said, "and told me certain things to add and I think there's been things all year that I've been working on and trying to improve. And I think I just have to keep adding more and keep getting ready so I can play in the playoffs."

Hamilton got into just seven of Boston's 22 postseason games last spring. He was guilty of a defensive blunder that led to the overtime winner in the Rangers series, and that was it for him. He has improved since then, but not by leaps and bounds.

Chara, who teamed with Seidenberg in past playoffs, could end up baby-sitting Hamilton on the top pair, with Boychuk and either McQuaid — if he's recovered — or perhaps Maszaros making up the second pair, although this is all speculation right now.

The third pair will come from among Krug, Matt Bartkowski and the increasingly impressive Kevan Miller, with the other deadline-day trade pickup, Corey Potter, a long shot. There probably aren't enough games left for Potter to get a fair test, and Krug — even with his small size (5-foot-9, 181 pounds) and occasional defensive gaffes — has a huge edge because of that dangerous slap shot he unveiled in last spring's playoffs and his team-leading 6-12-18 totals this season on the power play.

"Torey, I've seen all year and he's been good for us," Julien said. "There's areas he's got to work on, like every other player, but there's other guys that need to have a look at different places. So that decision (to scratch him) was made for those kind of reasons, nothing major."

Krug, by the way, is just four goals shy of tying Ray Bourque's club record for goals by a rookie defenseman with 17, set in 1979-80.

A byproduct of this eight-defenseman rotation down the stretch is that Chara, who turns 37 on Tuesday, is likely to get one or two games on the sidelines to catch his breath. He led the NHL in ice time (a 27:57 average) his first season in Boston (2006-07), but the numbers have gradually been ratcheted down to 26:50, 26:04, 25:22, 25:26 (the Cup year), 25:00 and 24:56 this season.

Yet the big guy is having one of his best offensive seasons with 16 goals and 30 points, 9 and 13 of that on the power play, where Chara is in front of the net taking punishment but also saving serious wear and tear on his legs because he's covering less ice.

Chara, despite also playing in the Olympics albeit making an early exit, likes the audition concept that Julien is trying.

"I think it brings a lot of good competition on the back end," said the 6-foot-9 behemoth. "It's something that necessarily doesn't mean that the guy who's sitting out is playing poorly. Maybe, like we said, the coaching is looking for different pairings and different types of situations that we could use later on."

Indeed. The left-shooting Meszaros, who played the right side alongside Chara in his Bruins debut, was moved back to his natural left side with Miller on Thursday. He insists he has no preference, other than to play somewhere.

"(It) doesn't matter to me where I play," Meszaros said after Thursday's game. "I like both sides, I'm used to both sides. So wherever they're going to put me, I'm going to play."

Meszaros is also getting accustomed to the change in style in Boston, where Julien employs a zone defense that funnels everything to the outside. The Flyers were more man-to-man.

"Yeah, it's a little bit different than in Philly," he said. "I'm not saying it's tougher, but definitely different. But that's obviously you can learn that as we go."

Julien's 300th Bruins win

Julien, who recorded his 400th NHL victory two days before Christmas, got another gift on Thursday — his 300th win as coach of the Bruins, which has been accomplished in just under seven seasons. His record in Boston as of Friday was 300-163-61 (.630). Only Art Ross has more Bruins victories (387).

Julien made fun about his December milestone, and he again claimed ignorance when asked Thursday about the latest accomplishment.

"I had no knowledge," he said after the win, "and my guys know that it doesn't matter to me. I've said that before. It's great, don't get me wrong. It's great. I'm happy it's happened here.

"But at the same time for me, I'd like to look forward to hopefully a lot more than just that. I'm proud to have accomplished this in Boston. I think it's great, I've really enjoyed myself here, and I'm looking for, I would say, another 300."

Someone asked if he ever expected such success here when he took the job in 2007.

"Well, you know, I'm going to be honest with you. My first comment when I came here, and I remember it vividly, because I said I am here to win this team a Stanley Cup. Now I'm saying I'm here to help this team win more than one Stanley Cup.

"I just felt that where they were and what they had, there's a lot of room to grow and that's kind of what I like to do as a coach. I like developing, I like growing a team, and I thought it was a great fit for me with that situation and also with Peter (Chiarelli), having known Peter for a long time and vice versa. There was that trust, that instant trust there between the two of us."

Soderberg accepts injury

Carl Soderberg, who has become a force on the third line with 6-8-14 totals in his last 16 games as of Friday, is working his magic with 20/80 vision in his left eye, which was struck by a high stick in Sweden when he was 20 years old. He suffered a detached retina.

"The first weeks after it happened, my injury, I was really scared," Soderberg told The Boston Globe. "What about if I don't see? Am I going to be blind? Stuff like that. But then you have to accept it, and then it's no problem anymore."

Asked how well he can see, Soderberg said: "Actually, I don't see much at all." He has described his sight out of the eye as shadows.

"But that's the thing you learn after a couple years," Soderberg added. "You can live with it."

The accident happened in 2006, a year before the St. Louis Blues — who drafted Soderberg in the second round with the 49th pick in 2004 — traded him to the Bruins for goalie Hannu Toivonen, who did a nosedive after a couple of decent backup years in Boston.

That began a three-year cat-and-mouse game between the Bruins and Soderberg, who had to mature before accepting the NHL and the U.S. He had left the Blues and went back to Sweden when St. Louis demoted him to the AHL, and he didn't return until Chiarelli picked him up at the airport last spring.

He has blossomed as the third-line center with Chris Kelly, also a center, on the left wing and Eriksson on the right. They have become the sort of backbreaking third line that the Bruins had with Michael Ryder, Kelly and Rich Peverley in their 2010-11 title season.

"His line is one of the reasons that he's been doing really good," Julien said of Soderberg, "because I think Kells (Kelly) has come in and done a good job on that left wing, but Loui, as we all saw or we all see, is just playing much better hockey since that injury.

"So that in itself makes for a better line, and like I said the other day, I think in Carl's situation, he loves to skate, so by putting him at center, he's been able to cover of a lot of ice and that seems to suit him better."

At 42 years and 12 days, the Devils' Jaromir Jagr became the oldest NHL player to score his 700th career goal. Gordie Howe, at 40 years and 265 days, had been the oldest. The youngest ever was – who else? — Wayne Gretzky at 29 years, 341 days. … The Bruins have nine players with 10 or more goals this season, which ties them for second in the NHL. They are the only team with two defensemen with double-digit goals (Chara and Krug). Hamilton has seven. … Anaheim's Bruce Boudreau needed the fewest games (496) to get his 300th career win. … Before he was traded from Buffalo to St. Louis, Sabres goalie Ryan Miller picked up two assists while making 36 saves in a 3-2 win over Carolina on Feb. 25. … In case you missed it, the New York Islanders got seven third-period goals from seven players to rally from a 3-0 deficit and beat the Canucks in Vancouver, 7-4, last week. … Here's how Eriksson's season has gone: He missed five games after being belted by the inimitable John Scott, missed 15 more games when he got a second concussion from Pittsburgh's Brooks Orpik (who paid for it, courtesy of Shawn Thornton), had his teeth smashed by a high stick in St. Louis, and missed a game after cutting his heel and opening it back up — with an infection to boot — after climbing into a cold tub in Sochi. Despite that, he had 1-4-5 totals in his last six games as of Friday.